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Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Finding the perfect cover illustration for a new book is always a challenge. For my speculative poetry collection Tales From the Holograph Woods (due out this month from Wattle and Daub Books) I hoped for something colourful and elegant, and a bit mysterious -- an image, perhaps, that hinted of unseen danger lurking in a magic realist wood. And so I was thrilled to come across this Henri Rousseau painting On the Forest Edge. It's less well known than much of Rousseau's work, and it seemed the ideal illustration for the title poem of my collection.

"Kernaghan has touched something deep and visceral with these verses. You will read them once, then, in the middle of the night, wake suddenly, shivering, and need to read them again." -- Sandra Kasturi, author of The Animal Bridegroom.On Saturday, September 26 at 2 p.m. I'll be reading at White Dwarf Books, 3715 West 10th Avenue in Vancouver B.C., along with fellow poet Marci Tentchoff of Double-Edged Books